Why Is Education Important?

Why is education important? Parents know education is important
for a child's success in life. Exactly, why is education important?
What are the details that make it important?

1. Reportedly, college graduates make 100% higher pay than
   high school graduates.
   
   
2. Brain power every day is becoming far more important
   than brawn power, even in blue collar jobs. For example,
   auto mechanics need to read and interpret manuals and
   computer printouts. To do this they need more schooling
   than mechanics of the past.
   
   
3. Increased schooling develops verbal skills, which are
   important in general, and, especially, in managerial
   positions.
   
   
4. Attending college or university helps one perform the
   day to day tasks of life more effectively, like locating
   the right doctor, searching for a good investment, finding
   a new job, or working out family challenges.
   
   
5. Education is important because it helps one develop new
   interests in life that may be entertaining or allow one to enter
   a new occupation.
   
   
6. Education is important because it leads to more job
   opportunities and a wider choice of jobs. Therefore, it is
   correlated with job satisfaction.
   
   

Warning! Education by itself may be used for good or bad purposes.
The determining factor is heart, the heart of you, the parent.
When I say heart, I mean heart as in heart and soul, as in heart in
the right place. For more on this topic click, here, to read about
the definition of unconditional love.

So there are some answers to the question, why is education
important. However, there is another answer to the question,
why is education important. Education is important when it can
maintain or even engender your interest in learning because
then you will automatically become a lifelong learner.

Why is education important for parenting healthy children? What is
the one most crucial reason education is important for parents?
Because, if parents educate themselves, regarding their children,
they can make choices and determine what is best for their children.
No education, no choice! No education means someone else
makes the choice for you and your children.

Let's looks at some of the choices, you can make, by clicking here.

Good parenting can help improve a child's school success.
However, first, a parent must understand what education
is. Another way of saying it: A parent must understand
just what is happening to his child when that child is in
school. If the school is forced to emphasize boring, rote
learning in its program, a parent needs to know this is the
case in order to aid her child.

For more on why is education important, and is education
what you think it is, click here.

By making learning fun, children realize learning is fun.

Is preschool the most important grade? Click here.

Positive parenting can improve success in school if you
know why most kids fail.

Click here to discover the most common reason children fail
to do well in school.

Want to help improve your children's chances for success in
school? Get help now by reading this article on teacher
and student relationship.

For things you can do at home to improve your child's
chances for school success, click here.

Bored child? Surprise him out of his rut by making learning
fun with playful parenting.

Good parenting is critical to school success. Click here,
for the parenting advice page.

Click here for information on how to help your child get
good grades now.

Click here, for surprising facts about public education.

To help readers evaluate their children's learning
experience both in school and at home, I've included an
important article by the famed neuroanatomist and
researcher, Dr. Marian Diamond.

By comparing Dr. Diamond's causes of academic success to
those in your school, you can decide why is education important
or unimportant to your child.

In her article, "What are the Determinants of Children's
Academic Successes and Difficulties?" Dr. Diamond lists
points that detail why a certain type of education is important
for our children. When we ask, why is education important?
It becomes important as more of Dr. Diamond's recommendations
are included in the educational process.

From our children's perspective, why is education important?
It's not important to them when it proves uninteresting
and unmeaningful to their lives.

As you read her recommendations, notice where your child's
education meets her recipe and where it doesn't.

Dr. Diamond writes: "Our recipe for an enriched environment to
determine academic success:

1. Includes setting the stage for enriching the cortex by
   first providing a steady source of positive emotional
   support - love, encouragement, warmth and caring. Our old
   rats live longer with tender loving care.
   
   
2. Provides a nutritious diet with enough protein,
   vitamins, minerals and calories. We have shown that with a
   low protein diet during development the branches on the
   nerve cells in the cortex do not flourish to be able to
   respond to an enriched condition.
   
   
3. Stimulates all the senses, but not necessarily all at
   once. A multisensory enrichment develops all of the cortex;
   whereas, an input from a single task stimulates the growth
   of only a precise area of the brain. One example, growing
   up responsibly on a farm surrounded by clean fresh air with
   all of its multisensory input supplies a wealth of varied
   stimuli to develop a cortex.
   
   
4. Has an atmosphere free of undue pressure and stress
   but suffused with a degree of pleasurable intensity.
   
   
5. Presents a series of novel challenges that are neither
   too easy nor too difficult for the child at his or her
   stage of development.
   
   
6. Allows for social interaction for a significant
   percentage of activities; there is no doubt peers are
   intrigued with and enjoy each other.
   
   
7. Promotes the development of a broad range of skills
   and interests that are mental, physical, aesthetic, social
   and emotional.
   
   
8. Gives the child an opportunity to choose many of his
   or her own activities. Allow each unique brain to choose.
   
   
9. Gives the child a chance to assess the results of his
   or her efforts and to modify them. As he builds sand
   castles on the beach and admires his construction before a
   wave destroys them and he needs to learn to start over and
   resculpt.
   
   
10. An enjoyable atmosphere that promotes exploration and
    the fun of learning; rats living in enriched environments
    are more exploratory than those living in
    impoverishment.
    
    
11. Above all, enriched environments allow the child to be
    an active participant rather than a passive observer; a
    healthy body will have the energy to become involved.
    

Did you know that the negative effects of television are related
to lower school grades, anxiety, aggression, obesity and suicide?

A nonenriched, impoverished environment, which can cause
difficulties and a lack of success, will tend to be
opposite in most of these ways, including:

1. A vacillating or negative emotional climate
   
   
2. A diet low in protein, vitamins, and minerals, and too
   high or too low in calories
   
   
3. Sensory deprivation
   
   
4. High levels of stress and pressure
   
   
5. Unchanging conditions lacking in novelty
   
   
6. Long periods of isolation from caregivers and/or peers
   
   
7. A heavy, dull atmosphere lacking in fun or in a sense
   of exploration and the joy of learning
   
   
8. A passive, rather than active involvement in some or
   all activities
   
   
9. Little personal choice of activities
   
   
10. Little chance to evaluate results or effects and
    change to different activities
    
    
11. Development in a narrow, not panoramic, range of
    interests"
    

A few notes, regarding Dr. Diamonds recommendations that
prove pertinent to our question, why is education
important?

• Dr. Diamond placed a positive emotional educational
  environment at the top of the list as an aid to learning.
  Why is education important for our children? When they feel
  its importance through a positive learning environment.
  
  
• From Dr. Diamond's recommendations, it is obvious how
  the increased emphasis on rote learning in our educational
  system is harming our children's learning?
  
  
• From studying Dr. Diamond's list, can you note any
  possible reasons why your child may be having trouble in
  school?
  

We end this section with a message from Dr. Diamond. She
says:


"Let me take one example, when it comes to providing toys
and activities for young children, there is, in general an
inverse relationship between the specificity and
elaborateness of a toy and its ability to excite the
imagination. A cast-off cardboard box can become a doll
house, a puppet stage, a school or an alien planet. Tools
for exploring, a magnifying glass, an old tape recorder, a
map, can open doors in the mind, as can the artifacts of
make believe. The more pressure the parent puts on a
child to produce something specific, the harder it is for
the child to express creativity and imagination.

All of these have their role to play in brain development.
BUT we have also learned that too much stimulation is
detrimental. The cerebral cortex does not show significant
growth with too much stimulation as it does with a moderate
amount. The brain needs time to transfer information into
its association cortex. Allow the child time to think about
what is happening and what is coming next. Allow for ample
free time too. Creative efforts need time to utilize what
has been stored in the brain. DO NOT OVER STIMULATE."

Why is education important? Because we've learned that
over stimulation is bad for our children's learning.

Why is education important? Because it teaches us how to
teach our children so they will eagerly learn.

Dr. Diamond's recipe is backed by years of research. What's
more, it makes sense. As you read, "Why is education
important," and other articles in the education section,
as well as the parenting section, refer back from time
to time to Dr. Diamond's recipe for academic success.
I think you will note how positive parenting, playful
parenting, "sooner" than possible counseling, etc.,
complement Dr. Diamond's recipe and help increase a child's
chances for academic success.

Finally, why education is important, and why parenting is
important for children? Because a good education is
important to the health and future of our children, but
it takes good parenting to determine when our kids are being
educated properly and when they are not being educated but
treated like rote learning robots.

In the final analysis education is important when it becomes
important, not only to parents, but in the minds of our kids,
for it is our kids who are being educated; therefore, education
must be made meaningfully important to them, and be taught
in stimulating environments- even if sometimes it takes a
parent to make this happen.